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From: david@ms.uky.csnet (David Herron, Resident E-mail Hack)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards,comp.sources.d
Subject: Distributing Software
Message-ID: <6396@ukma.ms.uky.csnet>
Date: Sun, 26-Apr-87 21:10:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: ukma.6396
Posted: Sun Apr 26 21:10:16 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 27-Apr-87 06:35:17 EDT
Organization: U of Ky, Math. Sciences, Lexington KY
Lines: 38
Xref: mnetor comp.unix.wizards:2043 comp.sources.d:637

The question for the day, gentle people, is "How to do software distributions"?

The situation.  We have a small-but-growing pile of locally-written
software which we feel would be useful to the world at large.  We could
release these things one-by-one to mod.sources and let the network
take care of it, but we're interested in doing it in a different way.
We're thinking that, at some point in our future, it would be useful
to be able to say that x places in the world are using software of
our manufacture.  Producing software and distributing it (even through
mod.sources) does bring some sort of visibility to our little department
and our university as a whole.  We should be able to reap some benefits
from causing this visibility.

With that as justification, let me ask again.

How do *you* handle the grubby details of doing software distributions?

Like, advertising the existance of your software, making the tapes,
handling verification, organization of the sources, or any other useful
ideas.  I would also be interested in hearing from professional software
houses, not just other Universities.

On a related point.  I think it would be useful if there were a central 
place which collected descriptions of such things and kept track of
ordering information.  (& etc).  But I know of no such central thing.
What I have in mind is something like the List of Lists.  

I'll post a summary of responses if there is interest.

I might even be interested in running a Distribution of Distributions
service.  hmmm...   :-)

advTHANKSance
-- 
-----   David Herron,  cbosgd!ukma!david, david@UKMA.BITNET, david@ms.uky.csnet
-----  (also "postmaster", "news", and the Usenet map maintainer for Kentucky.)
-----                 "Doodle, doodle, dee;                Wubba, wubba, wubba"
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